Lark Song

Willa Cather was Nebraskan, so I grew up with her short stories and epic portraits of strong midwestern women. Midway through her semi-autobiographical novel of a young artist named Thea, there is a startling break in tone, as Willa zooms out to announce a fierce, philosophical validation of artistic struggle. This passage became a kind of manifesto for me, memorized so that it was always on hand throughout my way-finding twenties in big-city St. Louis.

Lark Song is a series of ten drawings that overlays my own parallel narrative of youthful ambition and creative defiance onto Willa Cather’s text. I drew in india ink, gouache, acrylic, and colored pencil, then waxed the handmade paper and imposed it onto a separate screen print. Space between the layers of paper gives a watery blur to the hand-lettered text as it emerges behind the drawings. The protagonists are myself and my partner at the time, appearing as realistic portraits or taking character forms of animals: show dogs, gnats, ungulates.

These drawings were created during my residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, 2010. Animal figures comes from observational drawings of the extensive taxidermy collection of the River Country Nature Center. I had the honor of exhibiting the complete series at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska 2015 on the centennial of Song of the Lark’s publication.